Before moving to the Bay Area in 2006, I have lived in a number of places where my curious foundation was laid. I spent most of 90s and early 2000s competitively sailing in Turkish National Sailing Team, where I competed in European and World Championships. In 2000 I came to the US as an exchange student and finished high school. I’ve always been very interested in computers.
In college, even though I started out as Computer Science major, I switched to Interactive Digital Media, an interdisciplinary degree with an integrated curriculum from the departments of computer science, mass communication and art. I worked on small interactive web projects, mostly in Flash and HTML. Once I was done with school, I was ready. I wanted to learn how real technology was being designed and built. I wanted to be in the heart of technology. So in 2006— I made my move to the Bay Area.
I began my career as a graphic production artist at iWin, a social gaming company, where I had a wide range of responsibilities working with marketing, product and game development teams. I departed iWin in 2010 to join Fitbit, an innovative San Francisco start-up in it 's early days. As Fitbit 's first user interface and interaction designer, I was responsible for creating and defining a visual language, forming interaction design patterns across web, mobile , desktop and sensor-based hardware devices. In 2012, I decided to leave Fitbit to start my small design studio where I worked with some of the greatest teams on the planet.
Mid 2012, I worked with Lovely, a startup with the goal of redefining apartment search. I led the design efforts designing the company 's mobile application and web platform. Lovely got acquired by Rentpath in 2014. I, then joined the Omada Health team to help rethink healthcare delivery for people with the risk of diabetes. I led a team of 8 talented cross-discipline designers who focused on areas such as user interface design, product design, illustration, videography, animation and motion. Our team was responsible for web/mobile platform for patients, web platform for health coaches and marketing b2b campaigns. I worked on defining and refining the design process, coached, mentored and worked with the design team to form a design culture within the organization.
In 2015, I joined Operator, a small San Francisco startup aiming to rethink online shopping powered by a community of experts. At Operator, we designed a new commerce paradigm by utilizing experts and personal shoppers to help consumers shop via messaging. I was responsible for business tools for experts, a web communication platform and the iOS app for consumers.
In 2017 and 2018 I have worked with a number of teams to help define their design languages in various ways. I helped Spoke, an intelligent ticketing and knowledge management startup based in San Francisco. At Spoke, I helped design the foundation of the web knowledge system, including navigation patterns, knowledgebase, team pages, onboarding flows as well as establishing the company 's go to market brand. I helped Gantri, an online platform and marketplace for premium design products by designing their e-commerce website, and designing tools that make it easy to create and sell products by handling all the complexities - from prototyping to component sourcing to distribution.
